Insiders Suspect Foul Play in Actress Jeong Da-bin's Suicide

The actress Jeong Da-bin was found dead at a villa in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district on Saturday. Jeong was found hanged with a towel in the bathroom at the home of a person only identified as Lee.

Lee, Jeong’s boyfriend and the first to call the police, testified that Jeong came to his house very drunk in the early hours of Saturday morning and that he found her dead when he woke up around 7:50 a.m. According to police, Jeong had been drinking with two friends at a bar in Cheongdam-dong and called Lee to come and pick her up since she was too drunk to go home. Lee joined Jeong for a drink and they arrived at his house in Samseong-dong at around 3:20 a.m.

Lee told police that Jeong had recently been depressed over her lack of work and the imprisonment of her previous manager. Police estimated Jeong died between 7:30 to 7:50 a.m., and though no note was found, police assume it was suicide since there were no immediate signs of foul play.

A memorial for the actress Jeong Da-bin is being set up at the Asan Medical Center in Seoul on Saturday.

Jeong, whose real name was Jeong Hae-sun, posted a note on her personal blog around 5:04 a.m. on Friday expressing a complicated state of mind. “I am complicated, and I feel like I am going to die. I am angry without reason, and I might go mad…I feel like I have lost myself and my identity…The Lord came to me…I was about to collapse, and he quietly lifts me up.”

The exact cause of death will be revealed by the postmortem. A woman identified as Jang, who had been drinking with Jeong, said the actress was carefully choosing her next work and was eager to perform. “I can’t believe that she killed herself. Jeong invited us to her house the day after tomorrow, and she showed great determination about her acting career,” police quoted Jang as saying. Jeong’s family opposed an autopsy at first but changed their minds after a gathering Sunday to discover whether it was really suicide.

The actress Jeong Da-bin, who was found dead at a villa in Samseong-dong, Seoul on Saturday.

Jeong’s new management agency claims there were some suggestions of foul play. It said a scar on Jeong’s wrist was not from a suicide attempt in October 2006, as Lee had suggested, but a scar she received in her first year in high school. It also said the actress showed strong determination to work when she talked about her future plans with close friends she contacted right before her death. The agency says the last posting on her website cannot be read as a suicide note.

A member of Jeong’s family said, “We can’t figure out why she wanted to commit suicide, and we decided to request the postmortem because we want to know for sure what happened.”